The Worlds of Clifford Simak by Clifford Simak

The Worlds of Clifford Simak
By Clifford Simak
Copyright 1960

Dusty Zebra
Ever wonder what happens to your minor possessions that seem to mysteriously disappear never to be seen again? One man finds out that there exists another dimension where an alien race likes to acquire objects from our dimension, and they are always willing to trade. The man discovers a place on his desk that serves as a vortex into this other dimension of bartering aliens. He sends through various trinkets and office supplies and receives various, usually unidentifiable devices. But finally, he receives the one item no housewife will want to be without and makes millions by trading for hundreds of thousands of them. Newton’s Second Law takes effect because there has to be an equal and opposite reaction – even between dimensions.

This was a light, fun story. For its simplicity, it was overlong.

Honorable Opponent
An uneasy spaceship captain cools his heels on a barren planet, waiting to make a prisoner exchange. His side lost the war and lost it badly because their implacable enemy could make their ships disappear at will. When the enemy captain arrives to exchange the prisoners, the captain learns that alien races have alien perspectives on the reasons to wage war.

Simak, in the telling of this story, demonstrates that it must be accepted in science fiction writing that an alien culture would have values and ideas far different than our own. It’s a common theme in Golden Age science fiction done so well by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Theodore Sturgeon.

Carbon Copy
A small time real estate agent lands the deal of a lifetime when a developer offers him a 90 percent commission on leasing houses inside a new, self contained development complete with shopping centers and banks. The deal gets sweeter when the agent finds out that no matter how many families he leases homes to, there are always plenty of vacancies. The development always appears to be empty even though tenants regularly call him and visit him. He investigates to find out where these people went.

This is an original take on multi-dimension. Multi-dimension is as common in science fiction as rockets and flying saucers and remains a popular device today. Witness the television series, Lost. It’s easy to do it badly and having been done so many times, it’s difficult to find a new twist on it. Simak does.

Founding Father
A group of immortal humans flies through space for 100 years, enjoying each other’s company and passing the time in leisure and comfort. When they arrive at their destination planet, one man finds out he was alone on the ship. His fellow travelers were false beings conjured up by the Dimensino. His job is to see to his cargo – 1000 human embryos to be nurtured in incubators to start a new colony of man. But the Dimensino has an allure that he must defeat if he is to carry out his mission.

Simak’s prose are so crisp and spare in this story. It moves quickly and does not wander off into needless explanation. The Dimensino is. That’s all we know about it. That ambiguity makes it an enjoyable page turner.

Idiot’s Crusade
A young man with limited intelligence inexplicably finds himself endowed with powers that make him nearly omnipotent. He can change people’s actions, emotions, and motives with just mere thoughts. He can also make the do things. After “improving” the people of his village, he looks to expand his horizons.

The Big Front Yard
A fix-it man and antique dealer gets a heck of a surprise when some old, derelict computers are delivered to his home for him to look at. While his back door leads directly to his back yard, his front door opens into another world. The people who inhabit the world at his back door take notice immediately and his home becomes the center of worldwide attention. Meanwhile all the antique dealer wants to do is find his dog that has gone wandering off into that other world.

This was just a bit overlong to me. The story was traditional sci-fi that deals in dimensional doors. Simak does write the parts of animals well as he demonstrates here and in the story that follows.

Operation Stinky
An old man lives near an Air Force base in a shack. Under that shack are several skunks that the man has learned to co-exist with. One day, his dogs corner a skunk that seems to be special. He is friendly, purrs like a cat, and clings to the man like a pet. When that skunk makes modifications to the old man’s jalopy that give it some impressive abilities, the Air Force takes notice.

Thankfully, Simak did not engage in overtelling this story because it would have been easy to do with so much in play. He gives us enough action with the car to create the conflict. He develops the relationship between the man and his skunk just enough to know they share a bond, and the military people are not caricatures as they always seem to be in Golden Age sci-fi.

Jackpot
On a remote, arid plant, a salvage vessel crew finds the ultimate library containing answers to the mysteries of the cosmos. The crew is confident they are going to cash in on all of these great secrets. But the crew’s doctor has serious reservations about the morality of peddling in knowledge and throws a wrench into the works.

This morality conflict between captain and crew reminded me of the conflict between Spender and his captain in Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles story, Third Expedition.

Death Scene
As decades of war pummel the planet, men are suddenly given the ability to see 24 hours into the future. It gives each man the power to foresee the actions of others. War is rendered obsolete and there is peace in the world. But the ability forces other pastimes into obsolescence as well – activities such as sports, gambling, reading, etc. It’s against this backdrop that a man foresees his own death to come the following day. His family sees also and, as is custom in this world of perfectly prescient beings, they prepare to gather for an evening of reminiscing before the next day dawns.

Simak accomplishes here that feat of telling a great deal of story with just a few words. Those are the short stories that are best and kudos to Simak for this clever tale of culture shock and its fundamental and unforeseen effects on the lives of people.

Green Thumb
A county agricultural agent discovers he has an alien, and intelligent plant living on his property. He is able to gain the trust and eventually friendship of the plant – although their ability to communicate is nearly nonexistent. The agent knows that the plant abhors our world where vegetation is grown and harvested for the purposes of building, healing, eating, and recreation.

In a genre where alien races can oddly speak English, Simak successfully reminds us that any alien contact is probably going to be completely alien.

Lulu
A spaceship’s resident robot falls in love with every male member of the crew. When they reject her romantic overtures, she sets the ship down on a remote planet and shuts down. When she finds one of her own kind to fall in love with, her motives change. The men have to find a way to stay safe of her paramour and convince her to leave the planet.

Neighbor
A new neighbor takes over a run down farm in Coon Valley, Nebraska. His neighbors take note of how quickly he is able to make repairs to the home and the farm equipment. They notice that his farm implements need no manpower to make them run. They also notice that it always rains on his farm when he needs rain, despite what weather they may be having in the rest of the valley. The new neighbor is perfectly willing to share his abilities to benefit all, but a snooping reporter threatens to ruin it all.

This is the kind of science fiction that would influence later sci-fi screenwriters like Rod Serling. This nifty tale has Twilight Zone written all over it.

Book to Movie: Children of the Corn (1984)

Book to Movie: Children of the Corn (1984)
Screenplay by George Goldsmith
Director: Fritz Kiersch

The movie Children of the Corn is a retelling of the Stephen King short story that appeared in his first collection of short stories, Night Shift. The essence of the story is the same. A young couple traveling to California (the reason in the movie is unstated) hit a kid in the middle of a lonely stretch of road in rural Nebraska. The take the kid to a small town called Gatlin where they find a murderous cult of kids.

What is immediately evident is this is a completely different pair of characters than those of the King story. In the King story, they were a bickering couple, driving across the country trying to save their marriage. In this version, they are young and in love. Burt – played by Peter Horton -- is a newly minted doctor and their future seems bright. His girlfriend, Vicky – played by Linda Hamilton – is pushing him for a commitment in the relationship.

This was a wise change in the story in bringing it to screen. Young lovers make for a much better set of heroes than do bickering couples. The bickering couple worked well in the short story because it was short. Abrasive bickering would have made the movie tiresome and the characters unsympathetic.

Unlike the short story, we are introduced to the children, and it is those characters that really carry the movie. New to the story are Job and his sister, Sarah who has the gift of sight and draws horrific pictures that predict ghastly events in the future. They are there to see Joseph off on his ill-fated trip through the cornfield to the highway to get help for the kids who are trapped by the evil child-preacher Isaac and his fanatically sadistic sidekick, Malachi.

Just as in the story, Joseph meets his end with a cut throat, under the wheels of Burt’s car. Burt and Vicky put Joseph’s body in the trunk of their car and go off in search of help.

They find a roadside garage whose owner is unfriendly and hostile. He tells them he has no phone and no gas. He warns them away from Gatlin, telling them that “folks there got religion,” and don’t like outsiders. He directs them toward Hemmingford (which King fans will recognize as the home of Mother Abigail from The Stand) which is 17 miles beyond Gatlin.

Burt and Vicky get lost and the signs seem to be guiding them toward Gatlin no matter how hard they try to avoid it. This scene is foolish. It is apparent the director was trying to build a high level of tension as Burt and Vicky feverishly drive down dirt field access roads, making random turns. The choppy shot sequence and shrill music are supposed to lend to this tension. It amounts to three minutes of wasted time.

After driving through miles of cornfield, they arrive in Gatlin and find the place deserted. They decide to take off exploring. After Vicky has a scary encounter with some of Malachi’s henchmen, they resolve to get gone from Gatlin. But on their way out of town, they see movement in one of the houses. They stop to investigate and find Jobe and Sarah.

Things get improbable here. After hearing an account of what transpired in Gatlin three years ago when the kids slaughtered all of the adults on behalf of He Who Lives Behind the Rows. Burt inexplicably decides he wants to visit town hall and leave his girlfriend behind, knowing murdering, rampaging children are on the loose. With Burt off exploring, Vicky becomes easy prey for Malachi who kidnaps her and takes her to the cornfield where she is placed on a cross made of corn to be sacrificed to the unholy agrarian demon.

Burt investigates the church stumbles into a religious ritual where Amos, having attained the age of 19, shares his blood with the youthful congregation before going off to join He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This could have been a great scene, except for one stupid line that is so stupid it deflates the tension. In the midst of this horror, Burt tells the kids he wants to discuss the possibility of infection from Amos’ cut with whomever is in charge. He proceeds to engage the priestess in a theological discussion while his girlfriend is being held prisoner in the cornfield. George Goldsmith really blew this scene.

Eventually, the tension that has been developing between Malachi and Isaac -- the religious leader of the colony and he who speaks for He Who Lives Behind the Rows -- over whether or not to sacrifice Vicky now or later erupts. Malachi takes control and sacrifices Isaac to the demon in the corn. But when He Who Walks Behind the Rows is done with Isaac, he sends him back to tell Malachi that he is also to be sacrificed.

With both their leaders gone and the terrifying demon in their midst, the kids flee the cornfield. Vicky escapes and finds Burt, Sarah, and Job. Job recounts the last attempt to thwart Isaac, undertaken by the chief of police, and Burt figures out how to slay the monster. Then we have a happy ending where the young couple commits and decides to take the young orphans with them.

This movie certainly had its weaknesses, as noted above. However, I still rank Children of the Corn as one of the better adaptations of King’s work. Goldsmith introduced new interesting characters to make for a visually exciting adaptation. Sarah and Job help move the story as juvenile religious dissidents. The characters of Isaac and Malachi are among the creepiest in any King film. Kudos to John Franklin who portrayed Isaac in his first acting gig, and Courtney Gains, also in his acting debut, who made Malachi one menacing son of a bitch. Gains’ portrayal steals the show.

The happy, sappy ending was horrible. King films should end badly as the original stories do. King does not usually end stories in a happy way. The same thing was done to Cujo as a movie. Burt and Vicky should have died or barely escaped with their lives at best.

I saw this movie for the first time in my parents’ basement family room when it came out on Betamax in 1985. At the edge of my parents’ back yard was 15-20 acres of corn. My friends and I played and played in that corn as children. . .

House of Reckoning By John Saul

House of Reckoning
By John Saul
Copyright 2009

John Saul has published 31 novels over 32 years and has had several of his works appear on the New York Times Bestseller List. For all of his success, he is rarely mentioned in the company of better known, but less prolific writers.

I first read John Saul in the early 1990s when a friend lent me a copy of Second Child. Since then, I’ve read his entire body of work at least twice. Saul is a consistently good writer. Some of his books are not so good, but none of them are so bad that they are unreadable. Dean Koontz can’t make that claim. And while he’s published no magnum opus or great work that will define him like Robert McCammon did with Swan Song, he published many good and a few great books.

Saul relies on just a couple simple plot devices to tell his stories. They almost always have adolescents as their central characters. Those adolescents are usually social outcasts. Sometimes they are unloved and tormented at home as well. And there is always some malevolent force present to exploit those children’s alienation.

Such as it is in Saul’s latest book, House of Reckoning. Fifteen year old Sarah Crane is left to tend to her father’s farm after her mother dies because her father has fallen into an alcohol lubricated pit of despair and self pity after the death of his wife. One night as she walks to the neighborhood bar to find her father, she is struck a pickup truck on a country road – a pickup truck driven by her drunken father. Her father is on his way home having accidentally killed a man in a bar fight.

Dad ends up going to prison and Sarah is moved to a new town to live with a foster family whose father is a guard at the prison where Sarah’s dad is incarcerated. They welcome Sarah’s arrival in their home because she is a source of revenue from the county and a source of cheap labor as they immediately make her into a house servant.

Her status as the new kid and her pronounced limp permanently inflicted upon her by her accident, make her the subject of derision and scorn at the local high school. The only person who is nice to her is her art teacher who is also scorned in this conservative religious community for being a witch. Teacher Bettina Phillips inhabits an ancient mansion that is her ancestral home and served as the living quarters for her great grandparents several generations back who served as wardens of that prison for the criminally insane. Local residents socially shun her and her slowly decaying mansion.

Elsewhere in this small Vermont town there is a fifteen year old boy who hears voices in his head almost constantly. His strange behavior makes him the object of the school bullies who verbally torment him which they know makes the voices in his head yell louder, driving him to the brink of insanity. A chance encounter with Sarah reveals that her presence silences the voices. As outcasts, they are drawn together emotionally.

Sarah’s talent as an artist begins to manifest itself in ghastly ways. Without conscious thought, she paints scenes of murder and death, all taking place within the confines of her art teacher’s home. As Sarah paints, Eric lives out the horror that Sarah conveys to her canvass. It becomes apparent that the two children have a mystical link to each other and to the mansion known as Shutters.

Bettina, while exploring the ancient files left from the prison by her great, great, great grandfather, she finds a manuscript of short stories that describe acts that would make Poe cringe. When Sarah’s paintings begin to depict these unspeakable acts set within the confines of Shutters, Bettina suspects that these are not works of fiction, but rather documentation of actual events.

These suspicions grow as Sarah and Nick inadvertently act out some of these macabre tails. After having painted a picture of a man disemboweling a dog, the two are attacked by a dog set upon them by a school bully who is also the son of the sheriff. As the dog leaps to attack, Nick cuts it from chest to anus, neatly and cleanly. The dog falls dead, disemboweled. This, despite the fact that Nick had no weapon his hand.

Later, after Sarah has painted a picture of people burning alive, the sheriff’s son and the daughter of Sarah’s foster parents try to run them down on a country road. Nick, without thinking, sets the car afire and careening off the roadway. The sheriff’s son dies and only the wicked foster sister is left to tell an insane tale of witchcraft.

Sarah’s association with the art teacher has earned her the scorn and anger of her foster parents who lock her in an attic at night. Nick becomes increasingly concerned that his father is going to send him back to a mental hospital where he might never leave.

Both flee to the Shutter and Bettina Phillips to put an end to the madness. They delve deep into the endless catacombs of the ancient home. The sheriff, Nick’s father, and Sarah’s foster parents all arrive at the house and are drawn by a irresistible force to another time when the catacombs served as a private playground for a sadistic warden. To that time and that hell, each are consigned.

While this unfolds, Sarah learns that she has deep ties to the Phillips family and to Shutters and the grounds of the old asylum. She also finds she has blood ties to Nick. With the evil foster parents gone, the social worker places Sarah to live with Bettina Phillips and they all live happily ever after. . .

I would rank this as one of Saul’s average works. As I stated, this is a plot device that Saul has employed often and one has to think that this book was written on autopilot or with software assistance. Saul has been successful reusing formulas in the past because he makes each setting different and creates distinctive, if not well developed characters. These characters are atypical of Saul’s work for their lack of distinction in their development.

Saul develops adolescent characters well and has honed his talent for it over the years. He makes his pitiful heroes incredibly sympathetic and their tormentors purely hateful. It is not through introspection that Saul develops these characters, but through actions. He doesn’t achieve that effect in this story.

We have absolutely no backstory to provide motivation for the chief antagonist, the sheriff’s son. We learn nothing of his personality, his upbringing, some prior grudge he might hold. Nothing seems to motivate him. The foster parents get slightly better treatment and are well developed as greedy, uneducated, lower middle class with a wide narcissistic streak. Their frequent conflicts with Sarah are the only effective character development in the book. Eric is developed through minimal introspection. In the narrative, we experience Nick’s frustration and torment with the voices that bedevil him, but we could have felt more sympathy for him had his torment been given more development through a little more backstory.

The chief failing of the book is the underdevelopment of Shutters. Saul tells wonderful haunted house stories and frequently uses a prologue to the story to develop whatever malevolent force inhabits the dwelling. With Shutters, there is no prologue to give us a hint of the evil. Having Bettina read to us from the uncovered manuscripts might have done a great deal to make the house more terrifying. Other than the recollections of what Bettina was told as a child, we are told scant little about the horrific events that played out in the home’s cellar that lead to the downfall of Sarah and Nick’s tormenters.

Finally, for a reason that is never explained, Saul lifts a few pages from Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings as Shutters seems to repair itself a little with each event that transpires. The source of this rejuvenation is never revealed. It’s purpose never explained.

When Saul fails, it is usually because he leaves a lot of story on the table. There were so many subplots that could have been developed in this book. Nick doing battle with the voices, motivation for the sheriff’s son’s hatred of Nick, the evil history of the house. Saul touched none of it.

Saul has no lengthy tomes to his credit. His books average around 300 pages each. If he would free himself of this page constraint, there’s no telling how terrifying tale he could tell.

Book to Movie: Cat’s Eye (1985)

Book to Movie: Cat’s Eye (1985)
Screenplay by Stephen King
Directed by Lewis Teague

Two stories from King’s first collection of short stories, Night Shift are adapted in this anthology. The first is Quitters, Inc. The second is The Ledge. The movie wraps up with an original screen vignette.

The movie is set against the backdrop of the travels of a stray cat. In the movie’s opening credits, the cat is chased by Cujo, nearly run over by Christine, before he ends up in a moving van that takes him into the city. There, he hears the voice of a young girl (Drew Barrymore) beckoning him to help save her from the monster that inhabits her bedroom.

As they cat sees the image of the young girl in a television in a show room window, he is snatched up and placed in a cage. He is delivered to the offices of Quitters, Inc.

James Woods and his buddy pull up out front and Woods’ buddy drops him off to begin his trek toward being tobacco free. The story closely follows the short story from this point. The cat is used as the object in the torture demonstration.

Woods character has a tougher time with the quitting on screen than in the book. At one point, at a party, he begins to hallucinate. Just as in the story, he backslides and his wife is brought in for torture. A skirmish ensues and as Woods battles to stop his wife’s torture, the cat escapes the lab. Woods surrenders as the torture ends.

The final sequence ends with the same exclamation point as the story.

The cat then makes his way to a casino where two men, in a gambling haze, wager as to whether or not the cat can make it across the road. The coax the cat who successfully crosses the street, but not before causing a traffic accident. The cat is then scooped up by one of the high rollers and taken to the penthouse suite of the man with the ledge.

The vignette of The Ledge is essentially the same story as in the book. The tennis pro (played by Robert Hays of Airplane!) is forced to traverse the ledge around the building to win the gambler’s wife and $20,000. The plot twist is a bit more graphic than in the story, but the end is the same. The pro overpowers the bodyguard and forces the gambler out onto the ledge, where he is forced to walk. . .

As the men battle for control of the gun in the penthouse apartment, the cat escapes and makes it to suburbia. There, a young girl is being stalked by a spear-wielding troll who wants to suck the breath – and the life – out of young Drew Barrymore. This is very much in the keeping with the old wives’ tale of how a cat will suck the breath out of a baby.

Barrymore’s parents let her keep the cat, but he doesn’t get to sleep inside. Nonetheless, when the troll launches his first attack on Barrymore, the cat gets in a window and is able to ward off the troll. On his way out, the troll kills the girl’s pet parakeet for which the cat receives the blame. Despite being cast out of the house by the parents, he is there to fight the final battle with the troll to save Drew Barrymore.

The movie ends with the cat peacefully passing the days in suburbia.

This was one of King’s early efforts at a screenplay and he did a splendid job of adapting his stories to the big screen. The took on the quality of a comic book horror story much as his stories in Creepshow.

King clearly understands how to write for the visual medium. Like with his books, sometimes the stories leave a lot to be desired. Witness Sleepwalkers and Maximum Overdrive. More often than not, he hits the mark as he did here.

Book to Movie: Sometimes They Come Back (1991)

Book to Movie: Sometimes The Come Back
Made for television, 1991
Screenplay by Lawrence Konner
Directed by Tom McLoughlin

It would be more accurate to call this a retelling rather than an adaptation. While the plot of the movie follows the short story, many plot elements are reworked to make the story work for television.

In the short story, three of the hoods that accosted Jimmy and Wayne Norman in the underpass die in a car wreck six months after Wayne is murdered. In the movie, they die in that underpass. The car is hit by a train because little Jimmy Norman, in an act of terrified defiance, snatches their car keys so they are unable to get out of they way. Revenge on Jimmy for killing them is the motive rather than the ambiguous “unfinished business” of killing Jimmy that serves in the short story. I thought the movie’s plot enhancement worked.

The movie adds a son to the mix. Jimmy Norman, his wife and son settle in the New England town and Jimmy takes up teaching. Just as in the short story, students die tragic deaths and are replaced by the ghosts that stalk Jimmy. However, Konner adds a twist in having Jimmy nearby when the deaths occur, casting suspicion on him.

Konner enhances the element of an evil car. Haunted machinery, particularly cars, appears in a great deal of King’s fiction. Christine is the most popular example. But there’s a sinister car in It, in Riding the Bullet, and in From a Buick 8, the car is a portal into a hellish dimension. Like Christine, this car is a late fifties model. All nameplates have been stripped from it, so I am unable to identify it. The ghosts take to chasing Jimmy, his family and his friends around in this black car.

In the short story, Jimmy summons a demon to assist him in defeating his ghosts. In the movie, the fourth bully who survived the crash tries to help Jimmy, but ends up getting killed. When he dies, Wayne enters and the drama replays itself with the ghosts getting their just desserts.

Konner’s screenplay is a superb retelling. The padding of the story works in subplots and new characters. However, the movie was not well cast. This was perhaps the weakest performance I’ve ever seen from Tim Matheson. He phoned it in. The rest of the cast is undistinguished and uninspired.

Book to Movie: Battleground (2006)

The Night Shift short story, Battleground was adapted as the premier episode for a TNT television miniseries based on the short works of Stephen King. Battleground was the only story from Night Shift adapted for the 2006 television series. The other seven episodes were drawn from the book of the same name or a King collection entitled Everything’s Eventual.

The story unfolds on screen with Jason Renshaw carrying out the hit on the owner of Morris Toys, Hans Morris. Renshaw returns to his apartment to find a package from the Morris Toy Co. waiting for him, just as the short story began.

The action in the apartment unfolds much as it did in the short story. The tiny plastic soldiers have surprisingly effective weapons including helicopters, bazookas, RPGs, and cannons. They shoot it out in the apartment before Renshaw is forced out of the apartment, out on the ledge. In the short story, Renshaw meets his end as he climbs from this ledge onto the terrace.

In the TNT show, the battle continues and Renshaw actually defeats the troops. As he is relaxing in his hot tub, the special surprise makes himself known. In the short story, that was the thermonuclear device. In the screen version, it is a commando who is deadly.

The battle takes them out of the apartment, into the elevators and elevator shafts before Renshaw meets his end, much as he did in the short story, only in a different location.

In my review of the short story, I remarked that this story very closely resembled Richard Matheson’s Prey. This was not lost on King or the producers of the series. The screenplay was written by Matheson’s son, Richard Christian Matheson. A fleeting homage to the Matheson story appears when one of the rockets fired by the toy soldiers blows up a replica of the troll doll from the adaptation of Prey that appeared in Matheson’s television anthology Trilogy of Terror.

I recall reading a review of the miniseries that the screenplay very closely resembled a Twilight Zone episode entitled Invaders which was co-authored by Matheson and Rod Serling. In that episode, an old woman living alone on a frontier, does battle with miniature aliens from a miniature flying saucer. The episode contained just a few lines of dialogue at the end of the episode. Battleground contains just a couple lines of dialogue from a computer.

Unfortunately, the screenplay makes the weaknesses of the short story glaring. As I’ve stated many times, to enjoy horror fiction, one must be able to suspend belief. However, the author should not create a scenario whose real circumstances make it entirely improbable.

What is absolutely unbelievable is that a battle such as the one that takes place in Renshaw’s apartment would go unnoticed and unreported. Renshaw fires dozens of rounds into the floor of his high rise apartment which would have certainly passed through to the apartment below. There are multiple explosions. Shots are fired outside on the terrace and explosions are detonated inside the apartment. Despite all that noise, Renshaw is able to relax peacefully in his hot tub after the battle is fought.

Renshaw’s end in the short story comes much sooner, so it is plausible that authorities had not yet arrived before the miniature nuclear detonation. However, Renshaw’s respite makes that impossible in the film adaptation.

The special effects were top notch. As someone who had a large collection of plastic toy soldiers when I was a kid, it was cool to see them brought to life on the screen, looking as green and drab as they do in real life.

William Hurt turns in an acceptable performance that was not nearly as strong as Agnes Moorehead’s in similar circumstances in the Twilight Zone. The action scenes move nicely and the story builds to a nice climax. However, I can’t get by the improbability of it all and that ruins it for me.

Insomnia by Stephen King

Insomnia
By Stephen King
Copyright 1994

In the early 1990s, Stephen King embarked on a journey that saw his books infused with a strong feminist theme. Starting with Gerald’s Game in 1992, King would write a series of books where the primary focus was the damsel in distress. The tormentor is always a husband. In the books, women are noble creatures. Men are devils.

This was the third of King’s “feminist” books. And while it is not as bad as Gerald’s Game, it is not as good as Rose Madder or Delores Claiborne which makes it a pretty poor novel. This was the third time I’ve read it and it gets worse upon each rereading. I hope never to read it again.

Insomnia takes us back to the town of Derry where It took place. We find that many of our old friends from It are still in Derry. Mike Hanlon is still the town librarian and Ben Hanscomb designed the city’s new civic center – built after the flood of 1986 wiped out half the town.

We know of Derry that one of the Guardians of the Beam resides deep under the city. The Turtle, who vomited up our universe whilst ill with a stomach ailment, guard one of the doorways that stand at the end of every beam.

We know that Derry is a thin place – or “thinny” between worlds. The aforementioned creature from It was certainly a Dark Tower minion able to make his way into our world.

Old people in Derry are having a tough time sleeping. Ralph Roberts, a 72 year old widower grows distressed as he awakens earlier and earlier each morning, unable to get back to sleep. The lost sleep over weeks takes its toll on Roberts and he begins to hallucinate.

He starts seeing auras much like a spiritualist. The auras reveal the nature of the person and in some cases, their imminent deaths. He also notes that each person he sees has an umbilicus leading from our heads upward. Some people have longer cords than others. Seeing all this, Ralph is sure he is going insane. Still, the sensation is not unpleasant.

One night, while passing a sleepless night at his front window, Ralph observes what he believes to be two little people – twins – exiting the home of the sickly widow across the street. The two men are small and have faces that include all of the requisite features, yet are featureless. One carries with him a pair of large, stainless steel scissors. He places an anonymous 911 call and authorities arrive at the house to find a woman who died a natural death. Ralph does not report what he sees, but he is determined to find out who these two men were.

Meanwhile, the town of Derry is up in arms about the anticipated rally to be held by noted feminist, Susan Day. The central issue is abortion and Derry’s women’s health center. The pro-choicers are determined that the rally will happen while a fringe anti-abortion group is willing to take whatever measures necessary to prevent Day from speaking.

Ralph soon sees another of the “little bald doctors” as he calls them. This one is different from the first two. They were clean and mannerly as they left the house. They seem to share a camaraderie and mutual respect for each other and themselves. They were also clean and neat. The little bald doctor Ralph observes one night tormenting the local stray dog, wears a cruddy apron and wields a rusty scalpel. He is frightened of doctor #3.

Ralph soon learns that a friend of his, a widow who lives on the same street, also suffers from insomnia and has had similar experiences with auras. Together, they are able to find the two good doctors who they learn inflicted insomnia upon them so that they could see each other and communicate.

It is here that we come to learn a great deal about the Dark Tower and it makes this novel worth reading. Ralph names the doctors Clotho and Lachesis. Clotho and Lachesis explain that they are inhabitants of the lower levels of the Dark Tower and are yeoman servants of what is known as “The Purpose.” There job is to see that timely deaths are seen to by a cutting of that ethereal cord above the head of people. It is a job they do with tenderness and love.

The third doctor, they explain, is an agent of “The Random.” He metes out death without purpose. The kid that gets hit by the car – or tanker truck like Gage Creed in Pet Sematary are victims of The Random and Atropos as Ralph names him. While he is unseemly, they explain, he is an agent of the Dark Tower and necessary to the cosmos.

However, Atropos and his master the Crimson King, have a plan in mind that fits in with neither The Purpose nor The Random. Each person, with rare exceptions, will live and die by the Purpose or the Random. One of the few who is not is an insane man bent on stopping the rally. He serves neither and the Crimson King has co-opted Ed Deepneau to create chaos, mayhem, and murder in Derry while targeting one young boy in particular who threatens the plans of the master of the Dark Tower. Ralph and Lois must use the powers they acquire through their insomnia to thwart Ed Deepneau and the Crimson King, imprisoned or holding domain over a Dark Tower in another world.

Deepneau’s pro-life followers attack a battered women’s shelter outside of town, setting it afire and killing its staff. The residents and their children huddle in the basement as the building burns and the police lay siege, trying to force the armed protesters out or kill them. Lois and Ralph are able to “beam” into the basement and lead the women and children to safety.

When they arrive in the basement, they are not yet visible to the people trapped there, being “up levels” within the realm of existence. Except one child – a small boy – sees them and tells his mom there are angels in the room. It is this child, Patrick Danville, that Ralph and Lois must save at all costs. Patrick Danville will save the lives of two very important people, Lachesis tells them and he must be alive to do it or all the worlds and the universes in the cosmos will be laid to waste.

When the confrontation at the shelter is over, Ralph and Lois are alarmed to find that Deepneau is not among the dead. They learn that Deepneau has acquired a plane and plans to crash it into the civic center while Susan Day is speaking. All of the women who have just survived the attack by the pro-life forces – including Patrick Danville’s mother – are determined to attend that rally and hear Susan Day speak.

Ralph is able to get aboard the plane and while many die despite Ralph’s best effort, Patrick Danville and his mother survive along with hundreds of others who would have died had Ralph not thwarted Deepneau.

The story ends with Ralph and Lois married. They live together in marital bliss for several years. Then Ralph realizes the time has come for him to make good on a bargain he struck with Clotho and Lacheis. He rushes out into the street to save one final life.

It took King almost 800 pages to tell this tale. The action seems to get going right away when, early in the story, Ralph confronts Ed Deepneau at a traffic accident. Ed insists the truck he hit is carrying the bodies of dead babies. Ed had been his friend and Ralph is struck by Ed’s seeming instantaneous insanity. It’s a well written scene and King grabs the reader’s attention with it.

Then, he loses it with endless introspection, over explaining, and over development of characters. Event after event unfolds, told in great narrative detail, with many words. Yet, each event reveals so little information. It becomes tedious reading. There isn’t any real action until the end and by that time, the reader just wants the book to be over if he hasn’t already put it down.

Then other parts of it are just foolish. Ralph discovers he has a karate chop that delivers and energy blast that hurts Atropos. Lois can shoot little bolts of energy from her finger like a pistol. In a story that seems to revel in the deep nature of human existence within the cosmos dominated by a mysterious Dark Tower, this is b-grade science fiction.

The political overtones also weaken the book. King’s narrative does not declare a side in the endless debate over abortion. But, the feminist nature of the story with evil men harming innocent women against the backdrop of an abortion battle is not a good setting – it’s a distraction. King did a much better job of creating the same type of mass hysteria in Needful Things without being so damned ideological.

King had whetted the appetite of Dark Tower fans two years earlier with The Wastelands and despite how awful this book was, it was still a bone thrown to Dark Tower fans. We get our first real look at the Dark Tower, standing tall, with many spires, in a field of brilliantly red roses.

This is where we first meet inhabitants of the Dark Tower who describe its nature. There are many levels within the tower. It has many inhabitants, good and evil. But it is dominated by the evil Crimson King who will develop into Roland’s chief adversary.

King also sets up a new character in Patrick Danville, the kid with a fishhook shaped scar on his nose that will appear later in the Dark Tower series to save the lives of two important people at a most opportune time.

While it was in It that the town of Derry was established and developed quite well, we learn more about this fictional Maine city and it becomes fully incorporated into the Dark Tower world because, as we learn, even with It dead, there are still dangerous creatures who lurk beneath the city. Derry is a place the minions of the Dark Tower are very aware of and it has shown in the town’s history.

As a stand alone novel, I would recommend avoiding Insomnia. King has written worse books – but not many. It is entirely overlong. Its central characters are not interesting. It’s story is weakened by over telling. But for fans of the Dark Tower, it is essential reading. The information revealed in Insomnia is necessary for true appreciation of the story that is to unfold when King eventually returns to the story.

Next in the Dark Tower series is Wizards and Glass which is best described as an interlude where Roland’s life history unfolds. A review coming soon!

Book to Movie: The Mangler (1995)

The Mangler (1995)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Screenplay by Tobe Hooper

I said in my review of Graveyard Shift that it was the worst adaptation of a Stephen King work, but that I feared I would plumb new depths with this movie directed by Tobe Hooper who has a respectable horror film résumé. Thankfully, my fears were not realized.

That’s not to say I enjoyed it. I certainly did not. It suffered from many of the same weaknesses as Graveyard Shift, I would give The Mangler one half star as opposed to zero stars for Graveyard Shift.

The essence of the short story and the movie are the same. A small town police officer investigates the deaths of some workers at an industrial laundry. Each was crushed to death in a sheet press. A college professor determines that the blood of a virgin spilled upon the machine brings its evil to life. The short story does not end happily as the cop hears the press struggling to escape the confines of the factory and move into the world. The movie ends with typical Hollywood finality – with just enough room for a ridiculous sequel.

Tobe Hooper is marginally better at padding the story than was Graveyard Shift screenwriter John Espisito. I think the idea of the evil laundry owner presiding over a slaughter house of a facility was somewhat clever. However, where Tobe Hooper the screenwriter had a good idea, Tobe Hooper the director botched it badly. The evil laundry owner is a caricature, played badly by Robert Englund.

The film progresses much as the short story. Two guys carrying an old refrigerator bump into a young lady working at the press. She cuts her hand badly and her blood falls into the works of the press, priming the pump for evil. It’s not long before the evil industrial ironing board reaches out and snatches a sweet, old lady and folds her into something that would fit on a linen closet shelf.

The corrupt small town judge and sheriff show up at the laundry and declare it all to be just an unfortunate accident and that the press is safe. The town constable is not so sure because his college professor buddy is certain the machine is cursed.

More workers die or are injured. The factory owner peers down from his loft office and scowls and cheers as it happens. Inside his office is his ward and niece whom he has taken to molesting and raping. She is terrified of him and the machine because she knows its nature.

The Kelvinator that caused the accident becomes possessed by evil as well and swallows a small kid, having arrived in suburbia from the scrap yard. This works in the book because reading horror fiction and enjoying it requires the acceptance of certain absurdities. Our imagination generates images from the text that work for us. When we see them on film, our eyes can’t accept the absurdity. The scene looked foolish with the refrigerator trying to walk toward the constable and the constable knocking its “head” off with a sledgehammer.

In the end, with the assistance of the niece, the cop and the professor are able to enter the laundry, kill the evil owner with his own device, then perform the exorcism.

The twist at the end is another redeeming bit of writing in an otherwise terribly adapted movie. I did not see it coming. Of course, the twist opened the door for sequels. I will not suffer those. The Mangler 2 was made in 2001 and, from what I can tell from various plot summaries, involves the installation of a terrible computer virus on a high school computer system. The Mangler Reborn was a straight to video title in 2005 that has a man resurrecting the evil machine. According to an IMDB review, it is the best of the three Mangler movies. I’ll pass. . .

Tobe Hooper should not have touched this project. Stephen King’s Night Shift has three “machines come to life” stories. All three were made into movies and all three were ridiculously bad. The Mangler rises above Graveyard Shift only because Tobe Hooper does a marginally better job with his characters (except for the factory owner and the strange mortician who pops up at every death with no real role or purpose) and he does a marginally better job of padding the story.

Book to Movie: Graveyard Shift

Book to Movie: Graveyard Shift (1990)
Directed by Ralph S. Singleton
Screenplay by John Espisito

In the early 1990s, Adaptations of Kings work became the most popular pursuit in Hollywood. Adaptations of his books and short stories were constantly in the theaters or being broadcast on network television as miniseries. Several, including Graveyard Shift, were taken from King’s first short story collection, Night Shift.

The short story, the itinerant college drop out agrees to accompany his foreman and a few of his coworkers into the cellar of the textile mill where they work to remove the debris and kill the rats so the mill can pass a health and safety inspection.

They descend and begin the cleanup process of 100 years of detritus. They are alarmed by the number of rats and their seeming lack of fear of the humans who proceed to blast them with a high pressure hose. Finally, they find a trap door that is not part of the existing structure of the textile mill. They descend into an ancient cellar where they find the queen of the rats.

The short story is very much like a comic book story. Amusing, engaging, and entertaining. The movie is none of that.

Instead, the screenplay unfolds as a low grade rip off of Alien set inside a textile mill instead of a spaceship. The queen of the rats is a creature that stalks workers in the plant, killing and eating them. An exterminator, played by Brad Douriff (who played Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) is introduced as a maniacal presence in the cast who serves no real purpose except to provide unintended comic relief.

Short stories made into full length motion pictures require padding to fill the time. Sometimes, like in Children of the Corn, that padding develops the characters and builds the suspense. The padding here is just scene after scene of stupid people getting killed by a reject from Night of the Lepus. Every time one of them dies, I thought, “No great loss,” which is a phrase that appears in almost every King work.

As in the short story, the mill can not pass a health and safety inspection, so the foreman Warwick, played by Stephen Macht, chooses a crew to accompany him in the cellar over the July 4th weekend to do the cleaning.

The attempt to develop the characters is ridiculous. In the short story, Warwick was a bit of a prick. In the movie, he’s a caricature of a sadistic boss. The screenwriter contrives an underdeveloped sexual tension between college boy Jon Hall and Warick. Warick picks Hall and the object of his unrequited ardor for the weekend job to put torment them within the confines of the cellar. Macht tries to act menacing, but his attempt at a Maine accent sounds like a German trying to sound Irish and it’s just silly.

The crew descends into the cellar and begin their cleanup work. They become separated for just a few moments and super rat gets them. In the end, Hall and his new love (who I don’t think he ever gets around to kissing in the picture) find great queen rat and slay her.

Graveyard Shift the movie is not something to be enjoyed. It is something to be endured and suffered. If you do it more than once, you’re a fool. If this isn’t the worst adaptation of a King work in existence, I don’t look forward to finding it. The Mangler is next on my list as I work my way through the film adaptations of works from Night Shift. I may yet plumb new depths. Stay tuned. . .

Night Shift by Stephen King

Night Shift
by Stephen King
Copyright 1978

Night Shift is Stephen King’s first published collection of short stories. Many are new for the book and several are drawn from his early publishing history when he was publishing short stories in “gentlemen’s magazines” and horror pulps. The collection contains some very early King writing where we see the young man learning his craft. Other stories show us a writer who has learned, and is now honing his craft. Not all of the stories are good. But as a collection, the book is a gem!

Introduction by John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald introduces us to Stephen King. For readers of that time, this was King’s first formal introduction. Night Shift being his fourth book, he was a quickly rising star in the field of horror writing.

MacDonald introduces King with a narrative about the motivation, the process, and the excitement of writing. He scoffs at those who say, “I’ve always wanted to write,” for he argues that if you want to write, you write. If you’re a writer, you have to write. That is how he describes Stephen King.

MacDonald also says that King, whose works at the time were pilloried by critics as schlock horror, writes for an audience of one: himself.

For a writer of King’s youth, it had to be high praise and high honor to be feted by the likes of John D. MacDonald who had been publishing short stories in a variety of genres before King was born. MacDonald published short stories and novels in horror, sci-fi, traditional thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories. His name is not well known in the mainstream, but many writers in these genres were inspired by him.

Foreward
This is Stephen King introducing himself to his readers for the first time in his books. King’s “constant reader” knows that King often includes afterwords in his books to talk to the Constant Reader about where the idea of the story came from, about the writing process for the story or novel, and how he felt about it.

However, in this introduction, King seems a bit defensive. Well he should at that time. While giants of genre fiction like Bradbury and Asimov were starting to gain some legitimacy in the mainstream in the late 1970s, writers like Stephen King, Ira Levin, and Richard Matheson were still considered hacks writing dreck that no reputable connoisseur of literature would be caught dead reading. King talks about how people apologize for liking his books, saying they must be a little ghoulish for enjoying works like The Shining. King is defensive of his chosen genre and defiant of his critics. As the years have passed since Night Shift was published 32 years ago, we now know that that young, defiant Stephen King was replaced by a writer that, even though he would not admit it, wanted to be accepted by the mainstream as a “legitimate” writer of fiction.

Jerusalem’s Lot
Told through a series of old letters and a recovered journal, we learn the history of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine – known to movie and book fans as ‘Salem’s Lot. In the early 1850s, a young man has just inherited his family’s palatial estate in Cumberland County, Maine. He is shunned for his family and its estate has a reputation for being haunted and his family in known for being bringers of evil. He and his manservant travel to a nearby village called Jerusalem’s Lot which is feared by local inhabitants. They find the town deserted and an unsettling feeling of death pervades the village. They go the church where they find a blasphemous and evil book on the alter. Our hero comes to learn that it was his ancestor who brought this ancient tome of evil to Jerusalem’s Lot and invited the hosts of an ancient race and religion to this former section of Massachusetts. These old ones are familiar to scholars of horror fiction.

In a review of a collection of works by Ramsey Campbell, I panned his efforts to capture and imitate the voice of the legendary H.P. Lovecraft. Where Campbell failed, King succeeded and brilliantly! Using the story telling device of correspondence, King employs a Lovecraft device. Using the formal letter writing style of an earlier age, King captures Lovecraft’s voice. In invoking Yogsoggoth – one of the “nameless ones” of the Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos, King links one of his most famous “strange little towns” to the master of modern horror. It’s an absolutely brilliant imitation of Lovecraft that I can’t help but feel the old master would consider a homage and high compliment.

Graveyard Shift
A transient college dropout finds himself working in a New England textiles mill that is infested with rats. Down on his luck and needing money, he agrees to help his foreman on a crew to clean out the mills basements over the Fourth of July holiday. Down there, he and his fellow works find a different breed of rats; rats who do not know and do not fear men. . .

This is old fashioned pulp horror. King gives us no backstory. The characters are simple, bordering on clichés – the mouthy college dropout, the abrasive foreman who is the consummate company men, the cliché of the blue collar, working class slob who work in the mills. The horror is simple and straightforward and made me feel as if I were reading a comic book story. That’s not necessarily bad. A story need not be meaningful it is fun to read, and this one was fun.

A movie was made based on this story in 1990. I have not seen it, but I know it was panned by critics and King fans alike. I shall watch it and add a review to my blog.

This story was originally published in Cavalier October 1970

Night Surf
As Captain Trips, the fatal flu virus from The Stand rages across the country, a loose community forms on a New England beach to see what happens next. A small group feels that they are immune to Captain Trips because they have all had a strain of the flu earlier that’s antibodies seem to provide defense against the more lethal disease. But when one of the supposedly immune contracts Captain Trips, the crew on the beach is left pondering whether or not the immunity really exists and if they’ll survive much longer as fall approaches.

The publication of this story precedes publication of The Stand, so we might consider this a prequel for King’s crowning work. The characters are weak and we are given scant few clues as to what Captain Trips really is. Perhaps were I not so familiar with Captain Trips and its transcontinental swath of destruction, I would have enjoyed this story more.

This story was first published in Cavalier August 1974.

I Am the Doorway
An astronaut barely survives a splash down after returning from the first manned orbital probe of Venus. As he lounges in retirement, his hands become afflicted with strange blemishes. Those blemishes quickly evolve into eyes; eyes of a creature bent on killing.

In his halcyon days, King made a few attempts to crossover from traditional horror into a Bradbury type cross of horror and science fiction. He did this with uneven results. I didn’t enjoy this story as much as some others in the book. While King is able to recreate the narrative prose of Lovecraft, he misses the mark in trying to mix two genres as Bradbury was so able to do.

This story first appeared in Cavalier March 1971.

The Mangler
A police detective investigates a horrific industrial accident where a worker was pulled into a mechanical laundry presser and crushed to death. As his investigation proceeds, there are more unexplained accidents. When he and a college professor determine that the cause is a curse brought to life by the spilled blood of a virgin, they take action to break the curse and exorcise the ghost from the machine.

This story is representative of King’s early work. It is taut, honed, and tells a good story in a short period. There was a movie made based on this story that was universally panned. I have not yet seen it and will review it at a later date. Alas, I fear that seeing the movie may make me appreciate the story less.

This story was originally published in Cavalier December 1972.

The Boogeyman
A man recounts for his psychologist how he each of his three children die over a decade because he failed to check the closets for the fabled creature. The psychologist becomes a believer in the end.

This story, like many others in the book, had a comic book feel to it. It is wordy for the little bit of story it tells. King develops the main character as a narcissist for no other apparent reason than to make him interesting. Kudos for that!

This story was originally published in Cavalier March 1973.

Gray Matter
Country town retirees become concerned when one of their local drunks quits coming in for his daily ration of beer. Instead, he sends his son in to the store to be his canned beer. His son says that his father is slowly turning into something not human. The retirees go to investigate.

This story really doesn’t quite rise to the occasion. While I’m a firm believer that over-explaining a supernatural event in horror or science fiction is a bad idea. But I think the reader needs at least a hint of its origins. That’s the missing element in this story. There is a lesson in it, however. Don’t drink skunky beer!

This story was originally published in Cavalier October 1973.

Battleground
A hitman returns home after a job to find a package waiting for him – a gift from his next target, a toy maker. The package contains toy soldiers and military equipment. Being replica of Vietnam era equipment, the toy soldier package contains some bonus items sure to be enjoyed by kids and hitmen of all ages.

This story very closely resembles Richard Matheson’s Prey. The notion of children’s toys being malevolent attackers can be frightening. Matheson’s toy is. King’s is not.

This story was made into an episode of the TNT network series, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. This was the only story drawn from Night Shift for this series. This was a rare case where the screen adaptation exceeded the original story. Perhaps it was because it was none other than Richard Christian Matheson, the son of the horror and sci-fi master.

This story originally appeared in Cavalier September 1972.

Trucks
Several people are trapped in a truck stop diner by semis that have developed will and intelligence and want to kill all living things. The semi trucks are soon joined by smaller trucks and construction equipment. Their fuel is running out and they demand that the humans trapped inside come out and refuel them. The trapped people must decide if they will fight and die or become servants of the machine.

This was a fun story. None of the characters had an iota of development, but the story moved rapidly with a satisfying, but nebulous conclusion. The young Stephen King was not prone to using allegory or metaphor, preferring to tell stories for the fun of it. But, as the main character reflects on the future, he concludes that men have made machines that make it possible to access any point on earth, assuring that no place is safe in a world dominated by machines.

This story was made into a bad movie called Maximum Overdrive that was Stephen King’s first attempt at a full length screenplay. It was also directed by Stephen King. I will not be reviewing it since Netflix does not deem the film worthy of being in their collection of movies. I have seen it and it forced me to conclude that King should stick to books and leave screenplays to screenplay writers.

This story originally appeared in Cavalier June 1973.

Sometimes They Come Back
A young teacher takes a job at a upper middle class high school. Soon after taking the job, he starts having a recurring nightmare that recounts how his brother was murdered by some street toughs when they were young kids. When those same street toughs show up, one by one, in his seventh period lit class having aged not a day, he fears he’s having a breakdown. After his wife is killed, he decides to meet them head on.

This is a well told tale. It’s longer than most in the book, but it probably has the deepest, richest character in the book.

This story originally appeared in Cavelier March 1974 and was made into a made for television movie in 1991.

Strawberry Spring
Strawberry Spring comes once every eight to ten years in New England. And when the dense fog rolls into Maine, it brings out Springheel Jack, a serial killer who has a taste for college co-eds. A male student recounts Springheel Jack’s activities in the Strawberry Spring of 1971.

The twist, such as it was, was pretty apparent early because there was no other character in the story. For what the story lacks in plot, it makes up for in atmosphere. King makes the fictional college campus into the Scottish moors.

The Ledge
An aging tennis pro is confronted by the wealthy man with whose wife he is having an affair. The man offers him the opportunity to gain not only the wife, but $20,000 cash if he will simply walk around the ledge of his high rise apartment building. Should he choose not to accept the wager, he will be framed for heroin possession. The tennis pro starts out onto the ledge and begins his trek, forty stories above the city with his wealthy antagonist making it difficult for him.

This story was a lot of fun. I’m certain that the story has been told in different ways over the years, but King’s rendering is exceptionable. Instead of character development, King focuses his words on developing physical pain, which lends an urgency to the prose.

This story was originally published in the January 1976 edition of Penthouse. It was adapted to film as a segment of the movie Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye starring Robert Hays.

The Lawnmower Man
A man, concerned with how he has let his suburban lawn go hires a landscaping company to mow his grass and clean up the mess. The crew of one arrives with a strange lawnmower and a strange way of disposing of the yard waste.

This story was pure foolishness and is the weakest in the collection. There is nothing terrifying, mystifying, or even intriguing about the monster, such as it is. We do see another appearance of a haunted piece of machinery bedeviling a King hero, but that’s not enough to save this bad story.

This story first appeared in Cavalier May 1975. It was made into a movie in 1992 starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan. It does not remotely resemble the King story, but isn’t any better and perhaps much worse.

Quitters, Inc.
A hopelessly addicted smoker tries a radical program implemented by a radical company. One must stop smoking cold turkey, or his or her family will suffer increasingly painful punishments. The punishments get worse if the subject gains weight. The hero struggles against his addiction, knowing one slip will lead to agony for his wife.

King’s addiction to cigarettes is well known. I, too, have known the power cigarettes can have over one’s life. This is my favorite story in the book simply because, I can identify. The story telling is fabulous and this tale stands as one of his most brilliant short works.

This story was also a part of the Cat's Eye anthology and starred James Woods.

I Know What You Need
A college girl is approached by a fellow student while studying in the library who simply tells her “I know what you need.” Amazingly, he does. After her boyfriend is killed in a highway construction accident, she falls for the mysterious young man. But her nosy roommate finds out the young man has a bizarre past that might make him dangerous.

This story was two-thirds character study of the heroine. King wrote few character studies. He includes just enough story to keep this character study interesting.

This story originally appeared in Cosmopolitan January 1976.

Children of the Corn
A feuding couple decides to drive across the country from Boston to California to take one last shot at saving their marriage. As they travel along a rural Nebraska road, they strike a boy who runs out of the cornfield into the path of their car. A little investigation reveals that the boy’s throat was cut before he was hit by the car. The couple take him to the town of Gatlin which is seemingly deserted. They soon meet the young residents of Gatlin and the Old Testament demon they worship.

I saw the movie several years before reading the story, so the characters were already formed in my mind. Upon reading the story, I found King’s characters much different than George Goldsmith’s screenplay characters. The hostile relationship is a great backdrop against which to play out this terror.

This story was originally published in Penthouse March 1977. It was made into a movie in 1984.

The Last Rung on the Ladder
A corporate attorney receives a one sentence letter from his sister living in California. That letter’s contents remain a mystery to the reader as the attorney recalls an event from their childhood when the two of them were playing in a hayloft. As his sister ascends a ladder to the high rafters of their hayloft, the last rung breaks, leaving her hanging. Big brother is there to save the day. . .

When I read Stephen King, I read his tales for the horror or the fantastic tales he tells. It’s always been my judgment that whenever King tries to be politically or socially relevant, or tries to tell a story that has some other goal than to scare or intrigue, he falls short. This story is the exception and may be his best piece of mainstream fiction. I’m a big brother to a little sister. I understand that role and cherish the memories of it. This story really moved me with its profoundly sad end.

The Man Who Loved Flowers
A neat, prim fusses over what flowers to buy his sweetheart on his way home from work. Things go wildly awry when he shows up to deliver them.

We’re given a clue that is easily overlooked in the narrative, and I’ll give King credit for burying that seemingly innocuous piece of information in the narrative. However, there just wasn’t enough story or character development to make the story work.

This story was originally published in Gallery August 1977

One for the Road
Stephen King takes us on one last journey to ‘Salem’s Lot. A man staggers into a rural Maine bar during a blizzard. His car is stuck on a rural country road about six miles away. The bartender and patron recognize that the man’s family is in trouble, being left alone so close to the doomed village. They head out into the storm to find them.

This story was a nice exclamation point on one of King’s finest novels.

The Woman in the Room
A man plans to help his terminally ill mother die. He goes through the tedium of planning and plotting and . . .

What a horrifically weak ending to a great collection of short stories. This is the worst story in the book. It is dull beyond imagination. Characters are not interesting. The story is one dimensional.